Geoffrey Wood Quotes - Page 3

And keep them thinking in terms of 'being good' as this is not an end so much as a means to something else - happiness, respect, self-esteem, etc… And whatever their true end is, take it away, and so goes their goodness.

I have witnessed the pleasant result of producing a human who faithfully claims to be a Christian, but who on some fundamental level does not think Christianity actually works. And just one Christian of this type turns off dozens from trying out Christianity for themselves.

Even if their guilt actually does produce a good action, it will be the saddest good action you’ll ever see, and it will be of no use to them because their goal is not to obey, but to feel less guilty, thus nothing about their souls will be reshaped.

We’ve spent centuries moving them away from that word virtue and especially The Virtues and that’s precisely how we did it - by making it lower case.

As a motivation - for humans, but Christians especially - guilt is always wrong and can never move them to do anything He wants of them. Never let them realize that.

If we can keep the Christians thinking of themselves as sinners not sons and daughters, we can make them view their relationship to The Adversary as a negative-sum-game: They fall in a hole, He pulls them out, they fall back in, etc... That way they never get anywhere; they’re always either standing next to a hole or down in it.

Guilt, if cultivated in a Christian client, can render their Christianity worthless to themselves and others.

The Adversary, of course, simply wants them to lay down their sins, guilt and all, and follow Him. But this type holds on to their sinfulness and their guilt for it, because otherwise, they’d have no relationship with Him at all. And, of course, no relationship can be based on guilt and survive.

I’ve seen a disobedient client simply turn his attention toward The Adversary and ask “Are You still there?” and suddenly all was made well between them.

You see my point? The average person has a very average notion of goodness to which they aspire averagely. To aspire to goodness in any remarkable way would be ‘undemocratic’.

That dusty hill we can scarcely look upon and then only with pain, The Adversary, also with pain, does and must ever witness The Crucifixion.

Make them imagine repentance more like an appearance in court before a cranky old judge, less like a child knocking on his father’s study door to have a chat.

They view repentance as the thing they have to do in order to earn forgiveness, therefore the more difficult they make it, the more credit they tally up.

Remember, this type doesn’t really believe He’ll forgive them, by repenting they are trying to earn what they do not think, in any case, He will pay.

Their guilt plus their repentance should have equalled forgiveness. But they don’t feel forgiven, so they failed, which makes them feel guilty, which was why they repented in the first place, so they’re stuck right where they started: Guilty.

And recently, we installed another word in its place which, to their minds, has a wholly positive connotation. We say ‘Gluttony’. They say ‘Consumerism’.

If they ever envision Goodness as a thing that exists outside them, some real thing they’ve been called to participate in by their actions, well then, we’re headed right back toward The Virtues.

For example, your man might think: I don’t steal. Maybe on my taxes, everyone does that, but not in the way I heard so and so stole from his company. See? Those men for whose opinion he cares approve of embezzlement in one area, not the other. He uses them to maintain a claim on goodness while at the same time stealing.

The more we train a man to labor, deliberate, dictate and demand over the inconsequential, the less capable his mind becomes of holding that of consequence.

We have deficited upon their attention in the most disorderly fashion.